How Shipping Downtime during Peak Season is a Disaster Waiting to Happen
Hear from ProShip shipping experts for how system downtime affects your business – in more ways than one.
Last August, Amazon experienced a glitch, and its website was inaccessible for about 13 minutes. Based on 2015 reported revenues, Amazon’s 13 minutes of downtime cost the company over $2.6 million.
While outages or downtime have been reported to be less common now than in previous years, they have become much more expensive for the enterprise shipper. Over 60% of organizations surveyed noted losing over $100k to downtime. Further, nearly 15% of those reported 60% lost over $1 million.
Downtime is costly because of the real-world problems it generates. Unplanned downtime brings business to a grinding halt – most often not only in your supply chain.
How Disaster Strikes
Let’s start with the obvious: if your shipping software is down, you can’t ship (and we all know that time is money). Missed delivery promises impact the customer experience – affecting not only this sale but possibly those in the future. You could lose a customer's business permanently. Even worse, to a competitor who doesn’t have downtime issues and can effectively meet their delivery promises.
It’s well-known that customers tend to associate shipping issues with the company they purchased from and not the carrier. Therefore, even if a missed delivery expectation isn’t your fault, your brand is the one who will suffer. This may lead customers to look to a competitor to fulfill their needs.
In general, issues don’t happen when well-thought-out strategies are running smoothly. As your business scales, sometimes exponentially during peak season, your software may not have the flexibility to keep up. API-aggregators can compound this issue with simplistic and basic carrier connectivity that cannot handle the complex nuances of your business as well as a limited support team for when issues (aka downtime) arise. [More on Why API-Aggregators Could Leave You Hanging]
Eliminate Shipping System Downtime: How ProShip can Help
There are so many complications that we haven’t even touched that can emerge with downtime. Some of these include labor roadblocks with workers waiting for system recoveries, critical data loss, and regulatory ramifications of services unavailable for customers, employees, or other stakeholders.
It’s clear that all of these costs can make a big impact on your profits. The best plan of action is to partner with a multi-carrier shipping software solution who has the experience, as well as a history of limited downtime.
With an elite shipping software provider, automatic updates happen in real time, avoiding any stops in your shipping strategy. No shipper wants to deal with downtime, and with an automated and streamlined multi-carrier shipping software, you won’t have to. Customer experience, as well as your market share, depend on a reliable and flexible solution. This is especially true in the ever-changing parcel shipping landscape.
ProShip Uptime Fact
ProShip’s recent total peak uptime for our customer base was 99.99%, with any issues being resolved in an average of 1.6 hours.
This is why nearly 30% of the Top 100 Retailers who ship parcel trust ProShip.
Partner with ProShip, the industry-leader in automated multi-carrier shipping software for enterprise shippers, to not only protect your bottom line but more importantly, your brand. Don’t wait for next peak season – the time is now to avoid troublesome and costly downtime.
Were you inundated with downtime last peak season and wondering if it’s time to move on to a better solution? Check out ProShip’s eBook: Why Now is the Time to Break Up with Your Current Shipping Software!
Schedule a ProShip demo
Interested in parcel shipping software designed and developed by the industry’s leading experts in multi-carrier shipping? Look no further than ProShip. Schedule a demo with one of our shipping experts to see how ProShip can unlock parcel revenue potential and exceed customer expectations.
